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Thursday, March 22, 2012

'Tea Party Express' - more like a boil, than on the boil

The national political action committee known as the 'Tea Party Express' is rolling into St. Louis today to tell us locals that they've determined who the best grassroots 'Tea Party' candidate is for Missouri's U.S. Senate race, and we should all be good little folks and rally around them.

There are a number of problems with this, not the least of which is the fact that the official filing period for those who'd like to run for the senate hasn't closed yet, so there is a possibility that we, here in the actual grassroots, haven't even seen all of the potential candidates yet.

Another is that the primary has barely begun, we've barely heard from any of the candidates, let alone heard enough to determine who would be the best candidate to support.

But the part which disturbs me most has to do with what the Tea Party is, and what it is not - I hope.

The Tea Party has from the beginning, been the result of local citizens whose outrage at government gone wild got them up off their sofa's to come out and tell their representatives 'No more!', and in doing so, they looked around and noticed that they were not only not alone, but a force to be reckoned with.

Some individuals rose to the top of these groups, either by being the first to publicly say 'No!', which others heard and rallied to, or because they were willing to put in the time and effort to keep in touch with their new found fellows, and continued to let them know when and where they could best meet again to question their representatives and communicate to them that enough was enough, to communicate a message that might be summed up as:

"We are Americans, and we have Rights that are ours by our nature as men, they are not given to us as gifts from our government, and we have a constitution that was designed to make that relationship clear, and to constrain our government from thinking otherwise; We have a Constitution, it is time to follow it!".

Some of these people have followed where their new paths led, into political campaigning, media or simply sustaining their local rallying points, supplying their fellows with important information and ideas on how to keep the pressure on... but what pressure exactly was that, and for what?

The pressure has always been in the form of one person communicating questions, information and ideas for action, from one to another, occasionally meeting together again at a protest or rally, or a politicians appearance, or at the capitol rotunda, or the ballot box, but whatever the case, it has always been a movement that originated from the ground up, a true grassroots movement.

In this context grassroots has a particular meaning: it began, and continues to be, individual citizens communicating with each other, whether through email, blogs, rallies and/or other media, it's substance and momentum has come from We The People.

Even when there were national coordination’s, it was between those who had found themselves as... leaders isn't quite the right word, in fact it easily leads into the opposite of what they truly were and still are, they were people who organically found themselves at a focal point, the confluence of their fellows concerns, and coordinated ideas and actions with others who found themselves in similar positions, around the nation.

There were no elections, there were people who stood up, and who found that their fellows agreed with them, and urged them on. The people at those focal points have shifted and changed over the last few years, some still there, others tiring of the strain, slowed or stepped aside and another took their place.

These were not elections. They were not representatives. This was not a political party. They were not a form of government. They were people who were moved to action and found that they were not alone. They did not set the agenda, they simply expressed best what their fellow citizens were trying to say.

That is not the case with the so-called "Tea Party Express". This organization is a political action committee, funded by donors, perhaps sprung from the same original issues that the local Tea Parties were, but it is another animal entirely. By it's very nature it is NOT 'grassroots', it has it's own agenda, and while it may have had the same origins, it purposefully pulled itself out by the roots and transplanted its original growth into a tended planter, watered and cared for by financial contributors and beholden to others concerns.

Whether or not they still promote the same ideas is not the issue. They are NOT representative of the Tea Party, because they are NOT what the Tea Party IS. They've, on their own, without connection or even consultation with local citizenry, selected and decided to promote one candidate in our Senatorial primary, over the others. Why? Because they feel that that candidate is 'electable'.

If that's not the mating call of the entrenched establishment, I don't know what is.

And the fact that they expect to simply roll into town and tell us what we think or should think... makes my blood boil at a far higher temperature than any tea pot has ever whistled on the fire before.

Their endorsement of any candidate in our local elections, is foolish, futile, infuriating... and doomed to failure, because they have no roots here... or at least not amongst the local grass. Weeds perhaps. But no grassroots in sight.

5 comments:

I agree, endorsing Steelman is pointless. I'm sure she is a fine person, but anybody almost -- except Talent -- could beat Claire, especially in this cycle.

And the thing is that it is "news". I heard it on a Springfield station earlier.

The people that run the parties or are connected to the people who run the parties and who are connected to the media at some level were terrified in 2010 by their monumental irrelevance. They will fight back any way they can.

The Tea Party is more like minutemen than a standing army which drives those who like to lead armies nuts. It is also a short hand term for Constitutional, small government conservative. In our county Republican committee we are almost all self-identified "Tea Party" members who seek change from within starting at the bottom and are sick of the establishment at the top. So, whether it continues or fades, much good has come from this party or anti-party.

Blog:A blog (a blend of the term web log)[1] is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.

Blogodidact: (a blend of the term blog and autodidact) Weblog of a person discussing items of interest encountered along the way of becoming self-taught while working his way through the materials and ideas of Western Civilization, beginning with Homer, to the present day. The Blogodidactic process, though technically first begun in the mid 1980's, had its first known use in August of 2006.

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In school, I was the quiet kid in the back, then I spent the '80's playing in a travelling Rock Band on the West Coast. I stopped that to get married and have a life; in the process I've passed from Sales, to Teaching, to Coding, to Parenting and learning how the world went from Gilgamesh to the Founding Father's, to the fun filled world of today.

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Blog:A blog (a blend of the term web log)[1] is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.

Blogodidact: (a blend of the term blog and autodidact) Weblog of a person discussing items of interest encountered along the way of becoming self-taught while working his way through the materials and ideas of Western Civilization, beginning with Homer, to the present day. The Blogodidactic process, though technically first begun in the mid 1980's, had its first known use in August of 2006.